Horace

More jewellery

Posted on November 20, 2015 by Margaret Ford

There are only two sleeps to go before the Gifted event (https://www.facebook.com/openmindtextileworkshops) on Sunday and I’ve been trying to make some more jewellery pieces.

Status report:

Three red bangles L-R: mohair and cotton with glass beads on wire; variegated cotton with glass beads; and variegated cotton with bead “soup”.

Cotton embroidery yarn with glass bead mixture and button loop closure

Necklace of two strands of purple mixture of beads crocheted onto cotton embroidery yarn with magnetic closure.

Pure silk yarn (two) with glass beads bracelet and earrings (silver plated fittings).

Posted in bead crochet, Clothing, Design, freeform crocheting | 2 Comments

Crochet beading

Posted on November 8, 2015 by Margaret Ford

For the first time in my life I’m designing and making things to sell at the Gifted event organised by Elizabeth Morley on Sunday 22 November 2015.

Here’s what I’ve finished off today.

See https://www.facebook.com/openmindtextileworkshops for more on Gifted.

Posted in bead crochet, Design | 1 Comment

Sun dyeing and rainwater

Posted on November 5, 2015 by Margaret Ford

A couple of weekends ago I went to a WAFTA (wafta.com.au) organised visit to the Studio of textile artist and internationally recognised natural dye expert Trudi Pollard (Pollarddesigns.com) . Trudi showed us her naturally dyed fabrics, her fashion garments and then her colour garden. I was so inspired that I came home and weeded an area for sowing my own colour producing plants. It’ll be some time before anything sprouts!

In the meantime, I am trying to dye small pieces of silk and cotton in glass jars with plants that I have around. I got plenty of fabulous jars by asking at the op shop that I give most of my clothes and shoes to each season. They produced two bags full of them from out the back.

I’ve already tested the significance of pH by taking three jars and putting a 30cm square of silk , 60g of purple carrot and 300ml of water into each. Jar 1 had nothing else added. Jar 2 had 1 tablespoon of vinegar added. Jar 3 had 1 teaspoon of soda ash added to it.

L-R: silk and purple carrot in water; water plus vinegar; and water plus soda ash respectively.

Silk with purple carrot and, from L-R: water; water plus vinegar; and water plus soda ash respectively. Pictured on the same silk undyed.

I’ve put other things into the new jars too but they’ll be sometime “maturing” before I take them out.

From left to right: Cotton in onion skins and water; cotton in purple carrot and water; silk with dill and water; silk with dill and water and soda ash.

L-R: silk with rose hip tea bags, water and soda ash; and silk with water and red cabbage.

Today saw the start of my having my leaking roof repaired. It’s a big job and Sean Kelly of Roofology (fantastic name!) is still not finished but is doing a terrific job. At the risk of sounding like a complete fantasist and/or as though I was asking for something illegal, I asked Sean if he had any ideas for how I could collect rainwater for dyeing without going to the expense of installing rainwater tanks. Besides the cost, I don’t have any room for a tank in any case.

My new “rainwater tap”.

Voilà!! Sean has installed an overflow pipe (actually two of them but I didn’t get a good shot of the second one) which will fill a plastic rubbish bin when it pours, as it does in Perth in winter.

When it does rain, I’ll be able to test the difference between using tap water and using rainwater.

Readers of this post will probably recall this saying by Horace: Parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus or “The mountain laboured and brought forth a ridiculous mouse”!!

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Steaming with silver dollar leaves

Posted on September 2, 2015 by Margaret Ford

Eucalyptus cinerea or Silver Dollar

Eucalyptus erythrocorys (ilyarrie or red capped gum)

This time last week I was at Julie’s with all the various dye pots still going and the steamer on. My mother had carefully dried the smallish silver dollar leaves from a bouquet I’d given her and I painstakingly picked them off their stems and put them onto various cotton and also wool fabrics, spraying some with iron water (it was Julie’s and weaker than mine), and some with a copper water/vinegar solution. I left some unsprayed except for water. Julie had some ilyarrie (Eucalyptus erythrocorys) leaves from her father-in-law’s pruning so I used some of those too. This proved to be a family affair!

Voilà! After they’d languished in Julie’s cold steamer for a week I popped around and collected them. We actually unwrapped them with chilled fingers in the cold of the early evening because Julie wanted to see them too and I didn’t want to wait until I got home to see them unwrapped either!

The silver dollar leaves with ilyarrie leaves and sprayed with iron on fine wool.

Close up image of the silver dollar and ilyarrie leaf print combination with iron on fine wool fabric.

Somewhat brighter silver dollar and ilyarrie prints with copper spray on fine wool fabric.

Ilyarrie leaves on silk with a small amount of iron water.

Iron sprayed Ilyarrie leaves on silk with a sprig of lavender .

Hitherto undyed cotton sprayed with iron with leaves and lavender bound tightly into it.

Gotta go and unwrap another group of bundles now and walk up the street to a small park where there are a lot of Geraldton Wax plants that need trimming!

Posted in Natural dyeing | 4 Comments

The wonders of iron on the first day of Spring

Posted on September 1, 2015 by Margaret Ford

On a visit to the Fremantle Arts Centre last Friday to see Unfolding: Contemporary Indian Textiles curated by Maggie Baxter, I parked on a side road. The street trees were eucalypts and some branches had fallen quite some time ago. The leaves were quite dry and brown. In the pouring rain I dragged them to the car boot and stuffed them in! Unfortunately I don’t know their botanical names but there were two leaf sizes; long ones and small ones ( scientific, eh?)

Last night I found my trusty spray bottle of “iron water”. It’s a very old and, I suspect, quite concentrated solution of water and ferrous sulphate. It is a dark orange.

Selecting some old pieces of cotton sheeting and a few pieces of silk, I sprayed each liberally with the iron water and laid my Fremantle Arts Centre leaves on them. I bound each piece tightly with my increasingly beautiful over-dyed bandages, made of torn strips of old sheeting. I then boiled all the bundles in water on the stove in my dyeing only stockpot for an hour or a bit more (wasn’t paying attention).

The bundles cooled in the liquid overnight and this afternoon I opened them up. I’ve washed them in the washing machine and ironed them dry.

Cotton sheeting , sprayed with iron water, simmered for at least an hour and bound with unknown species of eucalyptus leaves.

Relatively open weave of 80% cotton; 20% silk fabric, sprayed with iron water and bound with unknown species of eucalyptus leaves leaves.

Narrow silk scarf bound with the smaller of the two unknown species of eucalyptus leaves and sprayed with iron water before simmering in water for at least an hour. The colour is not good in this image. The scarf is actually a rich dark chocolate.

Previously dyed bamboo sheeting scrap with a eucalyptus leaf added and iron spray.

I’m very pleased with these, although I’d like to find a way of getting good leaf imprints without the grey of the iron mordant.

Posted in Natural dyeing | 3 Comments

More natural dyeing

Posted on August 26, 2015 by Margaret Ford

Yesterday I went back to friend Julie’s dyeing pots. I took with me some pieces from our last session that were OK-ish but not very interesting. More on them later as they are still steaming!

A fortnight ago I wrapped some pale pink 80% cotton/ 20% silk fabric which had been dyed in avocado pips around some eucalyptus wandoo leaves. The little parcel has been sitting under brick and some plastic outside on the paving. I unwrapped it this morning.

Yay!! I have finally succeeded in getting clear leaf marks! They’re not the richly coloured and filled in ones that the experts get but they’re the best I’ve achieved!

Fabric: 80% cotton ; 20% silk dyed in avocado pips , dried and washed, then pre-soaked in soda ash and wrapped around Euc. wandoo leaves/ Left under pressure for two weeks.

Fabric: 80% cotton ; 20% silk dyed in avocado pips , dried and washed, then pre-soaked in soda ash and wrapped around Euc. wandoo leaves, then left under pressure for two weeks.

Same fabric as above.

Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments

Dyeing with Avocado Pips

Posted on August 11, 2015 by Margaret Ford

Yesterday my friend Julie and I had a day of dyeing using all the onion skins, avocado skins and pips, ripe olives, puffballs, and Euc. wandoo bark and leaves we’d each collected. The day went so well we had a second day today and I’ve just put a whole lot of wrapped bundles under a “plastic tent” in the back hoping I’ll forget about them. If I do forget them, they’ll have a nice long time and maybe even some sun to develop good markings.

I’ve tried avocado pips before and even when I’ve frozen them immediately after I’ve scraped out the flesh, I have found I only get pale pink on silk and cotton.

So this time before I submerged my 12 pips in water I googled. Thanks to “Hooked and Dyed” at http://hookedanddyed.com/2014/05/28/natural-dye-avocado/ I found a good tip. Add a teaspoon or so of soda ash to raise the pH while simmering and if necessary add more if the pH falls while dyeing.

What a difference it made!

Pips in water before heating but with 1 heaped teaspoon of soda ash added.

The pips have gone red within ten minutes as the water starts to steam.

Pieces of kitchen paper dipped in the solution after 15 , 30 and 45 minutes of simmering respectively.

The fabric I added to the bath was 20% silk and 80% cotton. This is it on the sink before rinsing (still wet).

The fabric after rinsing.

I remembered too late that such a high level of cotton content warranted pre-soaking with soda ash! I’ve since soaked that fabric and dyed it again in the avocado pip bath. It is now “resting” under plastic and hopefully weak winter sunshine for a few weeks. Fingers crossed.

I wondered how a piece of 100% silk would go in the same bath.

Silk tied and wrapped before adding to the avocado pip bath.

The silk was removed from the bath and allowed to sit overnight to cool before unwrapping. It’s a bit darker but still disappointing compared with the appearance of deep colour in the dye bath.

However, Julie fared better with a large piece of yummy and heavier dupion silk.

My friend Julie’s dupion silk which was in the same bath.

Clearly increasing the pH is a factor. Weight seems to be a factor also. It remains to be seen whether the pieces of soda ash soaked cotton I have left to rest outside will have an improved depth of colour. I must buy a pH testing kit though!

BTW, here is a photo of my tidied sewing room, just to show that the crocheted hat did not terminally distract me!

Hey, there’s a floor here!

Posted in Natural dyeing | 5 Comments

OMG! …or Celebration of Diversity

Posted on July 26, 2015 by Margaret Ford

Those of you who sensed that being a husband and father had always been a struggle for ROLAND

ROLAND star maker

were correct.

Last night I learned that a (metaphorical) sensational tsunami had hit his family.

But first, recall that #1 son had three children

#1 son’s three beautiful children

and that so far we have only had a peek into the lives of two of them. The third, the boy in the centre of the family photo above, has grown into adulthood unheralded, mainly because he has not favoured his parents with a society wedding or offspring. This is all the more surprising to observers of the family as he’s definitely attractive and has really nice manners. He’s become “the unattached uncle”. You’re getting it. Sounds like “confirmed bachelor”, doesn’t it? We all know what that’s a euphemism for.

Now back to last night…….

It was a family birthday party involving the formerly glamorous (+), now a little bit faded, second daughter (wife of ROLAND):

Our publicity shot of daughter #2

(+ the publicity shot records our second daughter AFTER orthodontic work, lots of ballet and gymnastic training and , yes, some surgery.)

It should have been wonderful. All three of her children were around her (albeit her son kept disappearing to scratch at his exzema and the girls were missing for extended periods that appeared to coincide with the arrival of the Suburban Studs).

ROLAND was as dutifully attentive as usual.

Her parents

#1 Son takes a wife

basked in their sense of dynastic achievement. Momentarily….

Perhaps it was the depressive effect of alcohol on the unattached uncle who drank because there seemed nothing else to do…. Perhaps it was that the incipient loneliness of ROLAND hit home to him at last as he watched his wife performing for a non-existent audience and ignoring the family around her.

Whatever, and however, ROLAND and his brother-in-law, the unattached uncle, both found themselves in the role of “always in the kitchen at parties”*** .

***http://www.metrolyrics.com/youll-always-find-me-in-the-kitchen-at-parties-lyrics-jona-lewie.html

Result: sensational tsunami.

Caught!

I know that there will be fallout over this. Inevitably. It’s predictable but I feel a decent interval should follow. I don’t want to be TOO intrusive……but I think a (quiet) celebration is in order.

Whether that celebration involves anything formal is, in the short term, in the hands of the Australian Government (aka Prime Minister Tony Abbott), which currently accords little recognition to gay leaves. Indeed leaves like ROLAND and the unattached uncle are not even regarded as ordinary leaves with rights. Spoiler alert Tony: If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.

I’ll spell it out. Substitute “leaf” for “duck”. Real leaves have rights.

Of course, in the event of a change of government, the Labor Party has promised marriage equality (platform announcement at ALP national conference on 26 July 2015).

Watch this space.

Posted in Design, freeform crocheting, freeform knitting | 1 Comment

Hats as Displacement Activities

Posted on July 26, 2015 by Margaret Ford

I really WAS going to clean out that sewing room. Honestly!

I always take a “before” shot, just in case I ever actually clean it all up. It’s be a shame not to have the proof.

But then I found the half done crocheted hat. No pattern and not even a hook to give me any clues as to how to finish it. [Actually there never was a pattern but at least when I started it I’d had a good rummage through the internet and had a feeling for the shape and style I wanted].

Today it was definitely a bit hard to relate to. However, there was sun on the front porch while the sewing room looked very gloomy and, well, messy. So I decided to wing it.

It’s very chunky yarn, 65% cotton and 35% PA. Brand is Grignasco Sweet Print and the recommended knitting needle size is a large 4-5 mm.

The yarn label and the two (four) hooks I used.

The floppy-looking bowl shape exiled to the plastic bag (the floppiness was no doubt why I’d not completed it before) looked as though it had been worked on a large hook. On experimentation it proved to have been a Tulip 7.0 or similar. I continued with this until I wanted to start tightening the band then switched for two rounds to the Tulip’s 5,0 end. After I’d worked the flaps I edged the whole thing with two rows of dc using the 3.0 end of another hook , finishing with a crab stitch edging in the 2.0 end. This last was hard as the yarn is not at all tightly spun and splits even with the theoretically “right” sized hook, let alone with a tiny one.

Anyway, here is the finished item for my daughter, who is enduring a very cold winter. It has a slouchy shape as she has long hair and likes to bunch it all up underneath. She also likes these whimsical styles. It’s probably going to look better on her head than on the soccer ball I’ve used as a proxy for a hat mould!

The finished hat, my design, and in fashion books but based on many images I've seen on the net.

The finished hat, my design, but based on many images I’ve seen on the net and in fashion magazines. Note the button trim at the back which supports a pleat to add shape for a pony tail

Made up slouchy hat: detail

Posted in Clothing, Design, freeform crocheting | 2 Comments

ROLAND makes his mark

Posted on July 17, 2015 by Margaret Ford

Of course a fortnight is a long time in a rainforest in Spring, but even so I am surprised at the fecundity of our leafette (late of New York) and her scabrous spouse.

Leafette in (now) trademark) pose with ROLAND supportive and unassertive in the background.

I’m guessing that ROLAND was overly affected (or infected?) by the obvious scepticism of his father-in-law. He sought to impress FIL by his dedication to the task of producing grand-leaves. This is no mean feat, given the pre-occupation of his wife with retaining her figure and her social life.

He is a true professional at whatever he does. Which means expending minimum energy for maximum effect.

Strategic use of the calendar, accompanied by surprise attacks following administration of bubbly in copious quantities, has enabled ROLAND to father three little leaflings for the FIL to spoil.

From left to right: daughters #1 and 2 and the son.

The daughters are in their mother’s mould, into ornamentation. They are also natural poseurs. This gives ROLAND some compensation for the burdens of fatherhood. He enters them frequently in Beautiful Baby competitions. They don’t win but that’s not because of his photography. Rather, the regrettable backlash against the sexualisation of children deems their poses, learned at the breast (actually from the bottle) from their mother, causes competition judges to decline to short list them.

The son is a floppy baby who has inherited his father’s skin irritation and keeps the whole family awake most nights with his cries for relief from the itch. What more can I say? Best ignore him, as they do.

Posted in Design, freeform crocheting, freeform knitting | 1 Comment